Tuesday, November 24, 2015

WILD WORLD OF WONDER WOMAN : RACKETEERS KIDNAP MISS SANTA CLAUS

You got ugly elves, Miss Santa Claus

It’s a shame that there are so few Wonder Woman Christmas
stories, if just because I’ve so enjoyed every one I’ve come across - at least in the Golden Age incarnation of the character. Then again,
it makes sense. Amazons had their own holiday traditions and weren’t part of
the Santa Claus scene. They didn’t even have chimneys for Santa to slide down, unless
they built one from cheerily bound-together women assembled in a tunnel of
leather straps and skin pulsing under tight ropes. Some fun for Santa!

This Christmas story, for instance, is pretty light on the
whimsy but loaded with dramatic costume changes and a lot of people getting
smacked on the head. In “Racketeers Kidnap Miss Santa Claus” (Sensation Comics
No.38 February 1944), to begin with, the story launches under the premise that “Miss
Santa Claus” is a character we all just already know about. Sure, Miss Santa
Claus, Santa Claus MD, Werewolf Hunter Santa Claus, all the great Santa Claus
Family.

SOME lucky kid's getting a possum!

While Christmas shopping, Diana Prince runs into skeptical
street kid Pete Allen, traveling spokesman for the powerful Poor Kids Against
Christmas lobby. Pete doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, much to Diana’s dismay.
This leads the amazing Amazon to deck herself out in an ADORABLE winter version
of her traditional costume. The fur trim is adorable, and it’s charming that
she apparently just had a winter wonderland version of her costume lying around
for just this eventuality. Now why she has the flight helmet, I can only guess.

Using her invisible plane to deliver toys to poor kids,
Wonder Woman gets conked on the bongo when sneaking through little Pete’s darkened
house. Frankly, she was asking for it.

The conker turns out to be Pete’s mom, armed with a chair
leg and deadly afraid that her horrible brother-in-law might be skulking around
in the dark, preparing to murder her or steal Christmas or something equally
Grinch-y/John Wayne Gacy-y.

That'll show her!

Her sister’s hubby is a quick-to-anger gangster-type named
Joe Blamko (Oh, those Summers we spent with ol Uncle Joe Blamko), a guy who
routinely slaps around Pete, his sister, his mom and his aunt. Joe also makes a
habit of breaking the kids’ toys or stealing money, and runs a private card
game in the back room with other local thugs and crooks. Plus that leads into a
secret tunnel where they hide to make big crook plans, and with all of this in
mind I think it’s fair to suggest that Pete’s got bigger troubles than not
believing in Santa Claus.

Joe Blamko isn’t much of a challenge for WW, strictly
speaking, but the presence of the children makes her vulnerable to demands for
her tight binding. Yes, it wouldn’t be a Golden Age Wonder Woman story without
a little bondage. Bound from shoulder-to-foot with her hands tied behind her
back, Diana has to hop around to perform little feats like enduring a dynamite
blast or letting hundreds of gold bricks slam into her back. Just a little
light holiday kinbaku.

Naturally, Wonder Woman sets everything to rights, jails the
creeps, provides Christmas for the impoverished family and underlines her home
truth: “Santa Claus is the Spirit of Love” she explains to disinterested
children, distracted with the first new toys they’ve seen in their entire,
short lives. Really what I took away from
this is women should feel free to brain their abusers with chair legs in the
dark, and THAT’S the TRUE spirit of Christmas!

"Like my vacuum cleaner with the hot rod flames painted on it, or the guy feeding jackets to a large steak knife." In the ear...

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